Mercenaries in protective armor under the sky of alien planets tell jokes and cases from their combat past Giant crabs in fog-covered forest whispered by women's voices … "Desert Lord", like a giant praying mantis, crawls out of his sand hole … The smell of blood, sweat and gunpowder, the dead glow of laser beams - all that a lover of real military fiction needs is in this novel. On the Way to Heaven, Dave Wolverton's first novel, published in 1989, instantly attracted the attention of both readers and critics. Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card said of Dave Wolverton's first book, "It's one of the most profound and powerful science fiction novels in the history of the genre."